The Language of Science Volume 5

The fifth volume of the collected works of Professor M.A.K. Halliday, The Language of Science, explores the semantic character of scientific discourse. The chapters are organized into two sections, one being on grammatical metaphor; the other dealing with scientific English. In language, there exists the potential for constructing new discourses, among them scientific discourse. The volume opens with a new work from Professor Halliday addressing the question, How big is a language? It is a question that goes to the heart of the paradigmatic complexity, or meaning potential, that characterizes language.

M. A. K. Halliday was born in Yorkshire in 1925. He was trained in Chinese for war service with the British Army, studied in China, taught Chinese in Britain for a number of years, then moved into linguistics, becoming in 1965 Professor of General Linguistics at University College London Jonathan J. Webster received his PhD in linguistics from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is currently Acting Head, Department of Chinese. Translation and Linguistics, and Associate Dean (Research and Administration), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, at the City University of Hong Kong